Fun with a Sears Silvertone Bass 150 (1466) Time Capsule - 1967

My first real bass amp was a Sears Silvertone 150, also known as the 1466. This was 1967. I traded the 1466 for a Fender Dual Showman head in 1970. Before I traded it away, I gigged with it for a couple of years driving a Fender Dual Showman cab with 2x15 JBL D140's. This was the late 1960's. I always thought it was a surprisingly loud head, which certainly sounded much better driving the Dual Showman cab than the poorly executed 6x10 cab it came with.

For years I've wondered about those 1466 heads, and wondered how much power they could actually put out. The Sears service literature says the head will produce 100 watts into a 5.3 ohm load (which is what the 6x10 cab presented), but I wondered if it was true or not.

A few weeks ago I found a 1466 head that was in working condition used. The electrical condition was as one would expect from a budget amp that's 50+ years old. It needed fresh caps through the preamp, & resistors that weren't so noisy in the first stage. I also replaced the first stage transistor which was also somewhat noisy. Thankfully, the main filter caps were in very good condition.

So, does the 1466 head really make 100 watts RMS or not?...
Well, on my bench it DOES in fact make 100 watt RMS into a 4 ohm load (I don't have a 5.3 ohm load). At this point, it's generating about 5% distortion, and into light clipping. The clipped waveform isn't nasty though, the edges are gently rounded. Below 100 watts, the distortion is overwhelmingly 2nd order...so it blends in well with the music. About 2.5% distortion at half power.

The frequency response of the 1466 head is actually quite flat with both tone controls set to max...+/-0.5db from 40Hz to about 10kHz. It's down 3db at 10Hz and 15kHz. Noise with the modern input transistor, fresh preamp caps, and new carbon film resistors is about -53db below 1 watt...quite acceptably quiet for a bass amp.

I added a 1/4 inch output (speaker) jack, and a grounded power cord. Since the power amp was working so nicely, I also added a 1/4 inch line-level input jack on the rear, which breaks the feed from the preamp board. Negative feedback is applied to the driver stage, and I went in at the stage prior to that.

I've attached a few picks of the amp driving my Mesa 115 and 112 combination. I honestly like the sound of the 1466 head...it's bright and punchy. And yes, it's as loud as I remember it. Not nearly as loud as my Mesa D800, but plenty for rehearsals, and small to medium sized gigs.

I wonder how many in the TalkBass community started with one of these?
Dave O.

 

Well, in reality, my first "bass amp" was a Knight-Kit 15 watt tube amp I had built into a couple of 12 inch Lincoln (Allied Radio) speakers. NO ONE could hear what I was playing, and perhaps that was just as well!

 

BTW, I should have mentioned that the Silvertone Bass 150 head is better driven from either an active bass, or a pedal. That's because the input impedance of the head is really low...like about 50k ohms. That much of a load on most passive bass pick-up's will suck the tone right out of them.

Any decent pedal with it's high Z input, and lower Z output will easily buffer it, remedy this.

As you can see, I'm running both the Ampeg SCR-DI, and my Keeley Bassist pedals ahead of the input to the Bass 150. The tone is really nice with those ahead of it.

Dave O.

 

BTW...
I should have given credit to the guy who's site inspired me to go back to my roots, and find/restore a Sears "Bass 150" (1466) amplifier...
Silvertone World - Amplifiers - 1960s - Model 1466
Lots of fun info there.
Dave O.

 

Jeremy...

I don't own a BA-210v2, nor do I have a schematic for that, or the SCR-DI pedal (which I do own).
If you know where I can find those, I could look at them, and give a good guess on if the circuit is about the same. Ampeg might give you an answer if you called them. I'm quite sure there are design folks there who do know. They've always been open to talking about technical details of their amps when I've called them.

I can tell you this...I didn't think I'd like the "Scrambler" before I bought that pedal. Figured it would be off all the time. I was just looking for a clean DI. Surprise surprise, I actually do like it, and use it just about all the time. Not a lot of it, just both knobs at around 9:00 or 10:00 depending on the bass and amp combination, and the sound the tune calls for. About where they are set in this pic.

In the studio, it makes my bass sound much more like it does live into an amp on stage. With the Scrambler turned off, the DI is as clean and clear as mountain spring water. I actually did measurements on it, and was amazed. Really love that SCR-DI. They got it right.

Dave O.

 

Actually, the 1466 "Bass 150" came from Sears with a 6x10 cabinet (almost always with Jensen's). There was another version called the 1463 that had a single 15 inch speaker (in a matching cab). That head was good for about 35 watts (according to Sears)....
Silvertone World - Amplifiers - 1960s - Model 1463 Bass

They look almost identical. The 1466 could play quite a lot louder however. The 1463 probably sounded a good bit deeper though with the 15. More like an Ampeg B-15. The 6x10 inch Jensen's moved a lot of mid-range air, but the cab was way too small to properly tune for much deep bass. That's why I replaced it with a Dual Showman cabinet.

Dave O.

 

Here's the 1466 cab from the rear with the back removed...

 

And front without the grill (courtesy of SilvertoneWorld.net)
There's really no way anyone could have fit 6x10's in any smaller space!

 

The front baffle board was originally made of Masonite, or something similar. Probably the sames stuff Dano was building guitars out of.

After my drivers started pulling loose in the cabinet, I took mine all apart, removed the front baffle board, and cut one just like it out of 3/8 inch plywood. I did something similar for the back, and added insulation. It was a much sturdier cab after that. Sounded a little better too.

Dave O.

 

That cab looks like it's been loaded with a single Jensen 15 inch.

That whole package looks like a miss-match too btw. That cab says "Solid State 100" on the front of it, but the head is a "Solid State 35". The "Solid State 100" cab was supposed to have 2x12 Jensen's in it. That one has a single 15. I'd guess someone stole the 2x12 Jensen's for their guitar, and put a new baffle board in with a single 15, which actually would match the "Solid State 35" bass head. That's probably where the Jensen 15 came from. The "Solid State 35" cab was also a vertical thing. That one's horizontal, and has a cut-out on the back for a wider (probably "Solid State 100") head.

Really carved-up. No collector value there.

Why do I remember ALL this crap, but can't remember my home phone number!?!
Dave O.

 

It's a good thing that my first bass amp was only 15 watts (no one could hear me).
Hey wait a minute, I grew up in St. Louis. Are you talking about me?